The sprint to get to the arrivals hall first is an unbecoming reflection of human nature, and for visitors unfamiliar with the system of passport checks who find themselves stuck in shuffling queues, they are a nightmare. And for politicians due to despatch their senior officials to police the borders on the day of public sector strike, they are a terrible headache – especially if, despite their efforts, irate passengers are held up on their planes. Politicians relish the Orwellian enigma of the UK Border sign and the message of power and control it conveys. Britain indeed is an island fortress. Except of course it is not – but the failure to exclude those who should not come in, nor to deport them subsequently, has little to do with the officers of the Border Agency. As this week's statistics show, it is at the start of the journey that most of the work is done. Check-in controls in Delhi or Sydney detected 68,000 people with inadequate authorisation to enter Britain last year, against 18,000 stopped once they got here. The huge majority of the 105 million passengers admitted will have encountered border security only fleetingly. And according to Damian Green, the immigration minister, talking to MPs at the home affairs select committee this week, the notion of a British border at Heathrow or Dover is already becoming old-fashioned. Sadly, the days when the great historian AJP Taylor could confidently write that a passport was required only by foreigners will never return. But at least its role could be demoted.